Dale Netski has taught at the College of Southern Nevada, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and now at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, gaining the respect of a large, diverse group of students who’ve gone on to flourish in their educational and career disciplines.
So what does this Las Vegas native who earned a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology feel compelled to do?
Try and find an even better way to educate future physicians.
Yes, this associate professor who teaches immunology and best practices for conducting research studies — he also serves as the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine’s director of student research and chair of the department of medical education — said “there can always be a better or efficient way to teach or do something.”
With that philosophy in mind, Netski recently finished a six-month online program through Harvard Medical School that helps train scholars in techniques for teaching diverse and dynamic medical students.
“The program has allowed me to gain the necessary skills to design an engaging, interactive medical curriculum that integrates novel and traditional educational theories and methods,” he said. “This course also contained several learning modules directly aimed at improving medical education scholarship, along with team projects and a capstone project. My goal is to now use what I learned from this curriculum to develop a medical education faculty development program to improve how we deliver and evaluate the educational curriculum at our medical school.”
Time and again Netski’s philosophy can be seen at work.
Never stop learning
When the pandemic first hit, Netski had never before taught online. So he took another course through Harvard that offered unique ways to teach immunology virtually.
To help prepare himself for his leadership role with the department of medical education, he took a virtual seminar course through the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“Gaining new knowledge on a topic opens our mind to new perspectives that you may not have thought of previously,” he said. “Lifelong learning is a passion of mine.”
As he talked about his life, about how he got to this time and place, the professor recalled that his passion for learning during his childhood could be seen well outside the classroom. “I learned how to slalom water ski at the age of 7 at Lake Mead,” he said. “I just loved learning how to do it, couldn’t get enough of it. My dad used to love going to the lake and I spent many weekends with him boating and water skiing. I still love skiing, both water and snow. One reason I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, instead of UNLV was because of its access to snow skiing.”
It was from his father, Rudolph “Dan” Netski Jr., who graduated from the first paramedic class offered in Southern Nevada, that Netski began to develop an interest in medicine. When the elder Netski, a U.S. Navy corpsman, came home from his work with Mercy Ambulance, he would tell his son about the runs he made to help people whose health issues ranged from heart attacks to gunshot wounds, exploits that occasionally made their way into the newspapers. “I remember when it came on the news about the fire at the MGM (the 1980 fire at the hotel killed 85 people) and knowing that my dad had to be there helping people,” Netski said.
As he grew older, the paramedic’s son found himself hanging around the Mercy Ambulance station, listening to life-saving stories from other paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and making some spending money by washing ambulances. In his senior year at Clark High School, he completed the training to become an EMT. Then he was driving ambulances and helping patients himself. Once he found himself doing four runs where he helped heart attack victims. “I did CPR compressions on four straight people and I thought my arms were going to fall off,” he…
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